Outlook 2011 for Mac to render HTML email via Webkit?

Some very exciting news via the blog at 9to5mac.com: ”Outlook 2011 uses Webkit to render HTML”. We don’t have much detail at this point, but Seth Weintraub reports that a Microsoft employee revealed:

“that instead of using the Word HTML rendering that previous versions of Mac Office used (and the PC version as well), Microsoft has moved over to Apple’s Webkit rendering engine to render HTML mails. Outlook 2011 also uses WebKit to create HTML mail.”

We don’t have any official confirmation at this stage, so don’t go throwing out your <tables> yet. If this pans out, it would be a huge step forward for Microsoft, even if it turns out to be a Mac only change. Using Webkit to both create and render emails works around Microsoft’s main reason for sticking with the Word renderer, which was consistency of display for their customers using MS tools.

Perhaps that FixOutlook.org poster caught someone’s eye! We look forward to bringing you updates as we dig in and see if this is for real. If it is, a big round of applause, and thanks to whoever was responsible.